Yes, but those firepits and grinding stones – they’re all from before.

  You mean before the Terror?

  Yes.

  And before the people of the tree and the cave?

  Long before.

  So, they’re not our kin?

  The ancients of the rock shelter? No. And yes. But we’re not of their people.

  I don’t understand.

  They’re the Countrymen, she said. Those who were here before. Actually, before there was a before.

  I ran my hand over my sodden head, bewildered.

  This is a very old place, she said. They came from forever ago.

  Before there was a before, I said, weighing the idea.

  Yes. And maybe they reckon they’ll be around after there’s an after.

  Doing what?

  I don’t know, she said. Doing what people do to stay alive together, I suppose. Doing what they always did.

  But they’re gone.

  That’s what folks like to tell themselves. But some say they moved to the desert. To regroup, wait things out.

  Like our people waiting in the cave. Waiting for the madness to stop.

  Maybe. Perhaps something like that, yes.

  Seems a long time to wait, though, doesn’t it?

  Maybe they’re good at waiting things out.

  But the sagas, I murmured. The sagas say there’s more world behind us than ahead.

  Yes, she said, beaming, and a little surprised that I should remember my lessons. But they also say this – that the world ahead is borne aloft by our dreams and works.

  I don’t know what that means.

  Perhaps it means everything lives and dies at the mercy of our ideas.

  Our ideas?

  Yes. Every action is the fruit of an idea.

  I don’t get it.

  You will. I hope you will. The world is older than you can imagine. And people have lived and done things and made things – and dreamt things – on a scale you can’t imagine. The Countrymen will have their own sagas, stories older than any we know.

  How?

  Because they had world enough and time.

  Right, I said, unsettled by the course this conversation had taken and needing to change tack before I foundered. So what about down south? Cityfolk, I mean.

  Well, they share our sagas. Most of them.

  What I mean is, do they live like us?

  Well, yes. And no.

  It’s always yes and no, I said, unable to hide my exasperation.

  She smiled. I got up to stand beneath the misters.

  Cityfolk’re just people like us, she said. They don’t all look like us, but they speak and live like us, mostly. In association.

  So they trade?

  Yes. But not for water. Water’s provided by the Association. Used to be from rivers. Now it’s desal.

  But what do they trade with?

  Oh, lots of things. Many more people. More needs. More materials and produce coming in. So yes, they grow things, like us. And make things – much more than us – because they can. But they live close up. Like fowls in boxes. For ease. Efficiency, really. And safety. So the city’s different, but its people aren’t so different from you and me. But make no mistake, no city boy your age will be out on the tops to see the sun come up. He won’t be sleeping alone under the stars. He wouldn’t survive a day in the open down south, let alone north of Capricorn.

  You’re just saying that.

  I’m saying it because it’s true. Are you still hungry?

  I am.

  Well, let’s see what we have.

  I’ll go there one day, I said, following her into the kitchen. The city.

  No doubt.

  I really thought I could feel them. Our old people.

  Maybe you did, she said, pulling out some mash. Or maybe you were just feeling people.

  Later that winter I was out on the deck, already sweated through from the morning’s work and shucking my boots for breakfast, when I noticed a column of dust out in the distance. The sun was barely a smear on the eastern horizon but there was light enough to register the signs of a vehicle travelling north out on the peninsula road. I watched the plume of its progress idly. A rig passing by at this hour was hardly noteworthy. It was simply something moving in the landscape. What caught my fuller attention was the way the dust wake suddenly petered out. I waited, more alert now, expecting it to pass by or perhaps to turn in. But there was no more dust.

  There’s someone out there, my mother called from the kitchen.

  I see it.

  She stepped onto the deck beside me, her scarves unravelled, her head bare.

  Take the quad, she said. And a spare batt.

  I rode out along the drive, stirred by the diversion, enjoying the wind in my wet shirt and scarf.

  Just south of our turnoff, I caught the flare of sun off a windscreen and headed for it. It was a flatbed. And behind that, a low-load trailer. As I approached, I saw someone sprawled on the track, trying to jack the lagger up in a welter of shredded rubber. I rolled in slowly, noting the load of steel pipe on the trailer, the crates of clamps and fixings lashed in beside it. On the tray of the truck was a furled swag wedged beneath a lift arm with a block and tackle. It wasn’t premium kit, but it looked decent enough.

  The kid dragged himself out and got to his feet as I drew level on the bike.

  Morning, I said.

  G’day.

  All good?

  He shrugged. I figured him about the same age as me. His teeth were bad, and I could smell the sour sweat on him.

  Just the tyre?

  He nodded.

  Need some help?

  Nah, he said, tilting at the water jerry lashed to the pillion behind me. But I could do with a slurp.

  I switched off the quad, got down and poured him a pannikin.

  I got me own somewhere, he said.

  Don’t worry, I replied. Saves you looking for it.

  He took the pannikin and, as he drank, he chomped at the tin rim, like an infant. It gave me a queasy feeling, the idea of his rotten teeth in my water mug. He drank the lot and stood there with it dangling from one grimy finger.

  Who’da thought, he said. Prince of the plain, givin me his cup.

  What?

  Nothin.

  You’re welcome, I said.

  I held my hand out and he passed it back with a grin.

  Been south?

  He nodded.

  Where’d you get the load?

  Shit’s where you find it, he said.

  You trade for it?

  Trade with it, mate.

  So you find stuff?

  Salvage, it’s called.

  I know the word.

  Course you do.

  You like it?

  The word or the work?

  The work, I said, struggling to make sense of his hostility.

  Work’s shit. And this place is fucked. Whole peninsula. Nothing I can do about it, but.

  What d’you mean, it’s fucked?

  Not even the end of August, mate. It’s fuckin hot already. Everything’s hard. This is fucked. All of it.

  End of the season, I said. That’s just how the world is.

  Says the prince.

  Mate, what’s your problem?

  Change your own wheels, do you?

  Yes, I said. Of course.

  Show me.

  What?

  Show me you know how to change a tyre.

  Who else’d change my wheels?

  Thought you’d have help.

  What, my mother?

  You haven’t got stiffs?

  No, I said.

  So it’s true? Just the two of youse out here?

  I shrugged. Irritated now, and wary.

  You haven’t showed me, he said, waving a hand at his mangled tyre.

  Mate, you can change your own bloody wheel.

  That’s fuckin hospitable, eh.

  You’re not on our place. This is the public road. I’ve given you the help you need. I’ve done my duty.

  Letter of the law! Mr Association! What a shiny-arse.

  I’ve got work to do, I said, stowing the pannikin and mounting up.

  I wheeled the quad around his rig and fanged it back to the house. I was hauling my boots off again when I saw his dust creep north toward the hamlet.

  Who was it? asked my mother.

  No one, I said. Just some hamlet kid with a flat.

  My encounter with that surly grafter stayed with me. Not just because it rankled but because something about his salvage caper lit my imagination. Driving south, foraging for stuff we wouldn’t have to trade for. Materials I could find and accumulate like water. Stuff we could trade with.

  As the season waned, the romance of it grew, and by the time my mother and I made the move underground the idea of the open road had its hooks in me. I could think of nothing else. There was of course a perfectly practical argument for getting into the salvage trade. It gave us another avenue, more safety. But in truth the appeal for me was in what I imagined to be a life of rambling liberty, roaming the countryside, free and alone. The idea of taking a chance and seeing what could be found.

  I was nervous about raising the prospect with my mother. I figured she needed to be approached gently. So I waited until the wee hours, when the night’s work was done but it was still too hot to sleep, when we lay on our cots and smoked a bit of choof to ease the discomfort. Bit by bit, night by night, I introduced the notion to her. Initially I proposed it as if thinking aloud. Later, I began to make the case with more purpose and growing confidence. She resisted at first, as I knew she would. Then she said we’d need a second vehicle, which made sense. After that, she declared that I’d need to be older before I could leave the homestead on a journey so long. Wasn’t it likely I’d be away for weeks at a time? What about all the extra kit required – a second trailer, a bank of auxiliary batteries? Then there was the matter of how she was supposed to cover my chores in my absence. The impediments soon began to seem insurmountable and for a while that summer it felt as if the list of them would never end. And yet the season passed and, along with it, one by one, all my mother’s reservations seemed to fall away.

  It didn’t happen immediately, not by a long shot, but I was on the road before I turned seventeen.

  Even so, it wasn’t a clean getaway. Because before I set out, my life took a turn. It was sudden. And huge. I guess you could say it was cataclysmic. It happened to all of us, I imagine. Each in our own way. In a matter of hours, the life you’ve known, the one you’d seen stretching out before you – it’s over.

  Me, I was too raw and isolated to imagine a disruption of such magnitude was even possible. Now, of course, I know it was inevitable. But it was a bloody long time before I copped on to that.

  It was a market day, just after sun-up. I’d been sent to trade fertilizer for parts. Well, one part in particular. A summer storm had ripped our biggest barrel turbine from its mount. And once we’d cobbled it all back together in the hot fug, we found – well, we heard, really – that the central axle had warped. The unit was functional, if less efficient, but after a few months the wobble and clunk it made as the big drum turned was beginning to get on my mother’s nerves. So, armed with bags of birdshit, I was tasked with sourcing a replacement in the hamlet.

  I hadn’t been long in the market square, casting about for likely prospects at the stalls and the long traders’ benches under the rippling shades, when a bloke loomed at my side. A little too close for comfort.

  He was a big fella. Took up more room than seemed reasonable. And there was something furtive about him. But also familiar. The facial scars gave him a sinister look, especially the pulpy mess where his left eye had once been. It was puckered and cinched like a drawstring bag. He stepped in so close that when he uttered my name his breath scalded my ear.

  It took me a couple of moments to place him. To get a proper look, I had to step back a little. But he took hold of my arm. Firmly. Drew me close again. It was the filmlayer. The one who used to come out now and then to visit my mother. The bloke with the feeble son. I’d never traded with him before. I hadn’t spoken to him since I was a kid. Back then he’d had both his eyes.

  I greeted him, as hamlet manners required, and tried to take another pace back. But he wouldn’t let go. He smiled and showed his broken teeth. His hands were huge and workworn. I could feel the barbs of his calluses through the sleeve of my tunic.

  Not easy to get, he said, hefting the warped axle from the public bench as if he had a right to my property and licence to be so close to my person.

  No, I said. I was just hoping someone here would have something like it.

  Well, good luck there, he said, turning it over, rolling it in his palm like a club. This is good gear.

  If you don’t look you won’t find, I said.

  What’s that, the sagas?

  No, I said. My mother.

  Ha. Well, she knows where to look and where best not to.

  Okay.

  This is old kit, he said of the axle. But reliable.

  Yeah.

  Happens I know someone with a lathe. Might turn you a new one.

  Oh, I demurred. We can’t afford to trade for a new one.

  Why don’t we find out what she’s asking?

  He led me by the arm. His manner was not aggressive, but it brooked no resistance. He was my elder, from my own hamlet, so there was nothing for me to do but submit. I felt apprehended as much as guided.

  He led me away from the shade sails and the growing crowd of locals, past the trestles and dropped tailgates of traders, toward the civil shelter.

  With its hulking curves and storm roof, the municipal centre was unlike other buildings in the hamlet. While most local houses were up on stilts, this place was set at ground level, as if gripping the dirt at every angle. And it was not low and louvred like all the workshops in town, or the godowns beside the wharf, but wide and high. Its big, sleeved cyclone shutters were rarely cranked up, and there were no other windows, so the place always had a cowled and opaque aspect. The walls were ribbed steel, coated with film and, given how dusty the square could get, unusually clean. I couldn’t imagine the water it must have cost to jet the place spotless every morning.

  I’d never been in. My mother said there were meeting rooms inside for the Association and the Co-op. Also, a nursing station and a tribunal chamber for settling disputes. In the cellar, she said, there was a storm shelter with a vault full of emergency provisions held in trust on behalf of all citizens of the community. Not that our family had ever made use of it.

  Since the age of fifteen I’d been eligible to cast a ballot, but my mother seemed happy to carry proxy while I stayed home and kept up the chores. I took no interest in hamlet affairs. Association candidates, traders, mechanicals, factors for procurers and suppliers from the south – I could hardly tell them apart. They struck me as uniformly old and dull. But they all deferred to my mother. And I figured that, like the filmlayer, they’d known and respected my father. It didn’t strike me as odd that my mother never stood for the Association. The idea didn’t even occur to me. She was a homesteader. People like us didn’t want to be around the hamlet a moment longer than necessary.

  Anyway, the filmlayer frogmarched me toward the hooded entrance of the civil shelter. And I’ll admit that, along with a sense of alarm, I felt a flicker of excitement. I had time enough to think that this was an odd way to enter that edifice for the first time. But he steered me right past the doors. We rounded the corner, into the narrow shade beside the building, and that’s when I came to my senses, felt something awry, and began to resist.

  I lunged to retrieve our axle from him, but he fended me off with a laugh and ruffled my hair indulgently. Then he took me around the far corner and pressed me face-forward against the wall.

  I pushed back, tried to twist free, but it was hopeless. I was a sturdy youth but clearly no match for this old coot. His easy skill and power rattled me.

  He mashed my brow against the hot corrugations. Said I should remain calm and remember my manners. That he would only release me if I stayed exactly where I was and faced the wall. By this point I was more angry than afraid, but I wasn’t stupid. The bloke had a big old lump of steel in his hands. I was always going to do as I was told.

  This axle, he growled against my neck. I definitely know someone who can help you out.

  Yes, came another, lighter voice behind us – a woman’s voice. Yes, I can make that. Leave it with me, son.

  Don’t move, said the filmlayer. Don’t turn around. And don’t speak.

  For several minutes I stood sweating in the early sun, too afraid and too stunned to turn around. I felt a firm prod. Something smooth and solid slid under my arm and rested gently against the glistening solar film that encased the metal sheet in front of me.

  Here, hold this, said the woman. I think that’s got you sorted.

  And don’t scratch my sunskin, said the filmlayer. That’s the best coating this vill’s ever likely to see.

  I could only see the bearing end and a part of the shaft – less than half an arm’s length – but it was a freshly-turned piece of steel.

  Exact replacement, full spec, said the woman.

  That’s bloody quick, I said, knowing it was impossible to fabricate something like that in a few minutes.

  Momentum is key, said the woman. Everything turns on the axle.

  So what do I owe you? I stammered. What do you need?

  Two hours of your time, she said.

  Doing what, exactly?

  Showing me what you’re made of.

  You need graft?

  No, she said. What I’m after is your attention.

  And this is how you trade?

  Yes, she said. Today it is.

  At that point I had a hot urge to tell her what I thought of the way she went about her business, but I thought better of it.

  When do you need me? I asked.

  Tonight, she said. Come back at sunset. Park out the front. When it’s fully dark, come back here. The door there to your right will be ajar. Don’t bring a light, don’t bring anybody else. Tell your mother you’re collecting an axle that’s being turned for you. Tell her you’ll be two hours.